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Jiong
Chinese character From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Jiong (Chinese: 囧; pinyin: jiǒng; Jyutping: gwing2) is a once obscure Chinese character meaning a "patterned window".[1] Since 2008, it has become an internet phenomenon and widely used to express embarrassment and gloom because of the character's resemblance to a sad facial expression.[2]
It has historically been used as a Chinese dictionary radical and has Shuowen Jiezi number 240, but it is not included among the Kangxi radicals, nor by the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components.
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Original meanings
- Window, according to Xu Shen's 2nd-century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi: "窻牖麗廔闓明" ('an open and light window').
- Granary. 米囧 means "put the new rice into a granary".
- Sacrificial place. Based on Chouli.
- Toponym.
Characters with Shuowen radical 240
Internet emoticon
The character for jiong is nowadays more widely used on the Internet as an ideographic emoticon representing a range of moods, as it resembles a person's face. It is commonly used to express ideas or feelings such as annoyance, shock, embarrassment, awkwardness, etc.
The use of jiong as an emoticon can be traced to 2005 or earlier; it was referenced on 20 January 2005 in a Chinese-language article on Orz.[3] The character is sometimes used in conjunction with orz, OTZ, or its other variants to form "囧rz", representing a person on their hands and knees (jiong forming the face, while r and z represent arms and legs, respectively) and symbolising despair or failure.
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Encoding
The character is included in Unicode at U+56E7 (囧).[4] Unicode also includes U+518F (冏), which is considered a variant.[5]
References
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